NETGEAR AC1900 Wi-Fi USB 3.0 Adapter for Desktop PC | Dual Band WiFi Stick for Wireless Internet (A7000-10000S)

I bought this portable USB WIFI adapter to help with a computer that was located in a corner of the house which did not receive a good wifi signal. This unit definitely helped and this computer is now getting a better signal. I bought a used version of this wifi adapter as a new unit was too expensive for my liking. Overall, I would recommend this unit at the used price point, I am neutral about its price point as a new unit. Here are some of my observations: PROS: The unit does help increase week wifi signals. I can’t tell how much definitely but my signal level increased about two bars. The unit is stable with no signal breaks or drop offs. The unit is larger than most portable wifi units that I have used in the past. With its base, I would not use this unit at a coffee shop as it is very obvious and large. However, without its base, you can connect the unit directly to your laptop with no obvious issues. The base unit also has magnets which you can use to position it on a metal surface if you have one. The unit’s driver, which was described as rather large in the comments section, is divided into two types. One type is standalone and a complete suite. I just used the standalone and it worked just fine with no issues noted thus far. The installation was relatively simple with no hang ups noted. Thus far, I have encountered no issues with this unit. CONS: The unit is larger than most. If you use the base, it will use a portion of your desktop that otherwise would be vacant. Not a big issue if you have a normal desk; however, if you are in cramped quarters just be aware. I wish they provided a longer cord for the base unit and made the chord a little thinner; although, not a significant issue thus far. The unit is not plug and play. You have to download the driver, its in a zip format, then decide what driver unit you want to use. It has a standalone and a suite format. I just used the standalone and it worked fine, for me not an issue, but some may find it confusing. The unit uses USB 3 or 2, but for best performance you have to have a USB 3 port open. For some laptops, this may be an issue, especially if you have other devices already attached to the laptop. I use this unit on a desktop so I don’t have this issue. I have used this unit continuously for about two weeks thus far with no issues noted. Thus far, it works as advertised.

My Mom needed a WiFi adapter antenna because the marina where she lives on her boat has one WiFi router and she's very far away from it so she barely gets any service. I bought this one from Netgear and a cheaper one from TP-Link because this one took longer to deliver and she needed one ASAP. The difference in performance between the two is MASSIVE. The TP-Link one improved the connection a bit, but it was still very slow and she couldn't have Zoom calls without the video and audio dropping out. Once she received the Netgear one, it was better than when she had a wired ethernet connection in her home. She also said that the setup was very fast and easy. Now she has zero problems with her internet. It's very fast and stable with no dropped connections, and no spinning wheel waiting for a page to load. I did a lot of research before buying one, and this is the best one by far. It's a little more expensive than the other ones, but you get what you pay for.

I've upgraded my adapter from an Alfa AR9721. Which used to work marvelously, but it got old and brought my network speed down to 4-5mbs, this adapter shot my speed up to 200mbps. I love this beautiful adapter and it's power. I feel like I'm on ethernet right now. Hahaha, it's so epic. Thank you to the seller for shipping it so quickly for me to enable me to develop my projects without any hassle. I love this amazing adapter. I have not had such a strong network signal in a long time via Wi-Fi. It's brilliant! I'm just another one of your super satisfied customers friend. Thanks for this hardware! I love it! (I realize I'm probably sounding like a broken record, but getting such a speed output through network speed tests shocked the crap out of me). xD

Moved into a new house and have my office setup in a shed across a large driveway from the house where the router is installed on the 2nd floor. My existing ASUS Vivobook is getting a little long in the tooth, but was still picking up wifi signal without any booster. Definitely not getting the 1GB speeds I'm paying for, but it allowed me to get some work done. I have another laptop for work with another client and it was able to get a much stronger signal. Initially another older laptop wouldn't see the signal at all, so I ended up grabbing a cheap $60 Netgear USB dongle at Wal-Mart. Noticed better speeds on both other laptops than my own ASUS. I was going to upgrade a variety of items (may still do that) but decided probably grabbing a new USB dongle for my laptop would be the fastest solution for me... and it was. The Netgear A7000 comes with a CD in the box to install software and drivers initially, but my ASUS Vivobook doesn't have an internal CD-ROM so I just plugged the sucker in and hoped for the best. Nothing. Visited the Netgear website to install the latest drivers and did, still nothing. Device wouldn't recognize driver and also appeared the Netgear Genie software wouldn't actually run either. I eventually had to manually install the driver for the device myself, not a big issue, but not something I think the average user would be able to accomplish. After I got the drivers installed, everything worked like a charm. As you can see from the included image. Got improved speeds overall, with fairly significant jump in my upload speeds. Now I just need to go in and relabel my wifi connections from Wifi1 and Wifi2 to something more helpful and descriptive.

Easy installation and was up and running almost immediately.

UPDATE: Okay now I'm beyond frustrated. Was working golden for a while now has absolutely nosedived in quality. My below fix lasted for a while but now nothing will help and it is completely failing me. I cannot keep up in my online classes now because they are not recorded and lag spikes every few minutes completely freeze me and I miss out on all the material discussed at those times. Would not recommend anymore. The Problems -- The two major issues I read reviews on before buying were frequent disconnections/lag spikes and how awful the Netgear genie is. When using the genie application, I agree that both are absolutely awful and it made my time using it a chore, because the only solution I found was uninstalling and reinstalling the genie, which was annoying and caused glitches. While this did work for a day or two at a time, there is a better fix. How to Fix Them -- Though the genie is used to connect to networks, it isn't needed. The trick to fix this is installing the driver from the genie independently. Because reviews don't let me put links, my best recommendation is searching YouTube for "fixing netgear a7000 genie and driver installation" by Samuel Hart. Their video details the process perfectly and will improve your experience with this adapter. When utilizing the driver and not the genie, I've had decent ping and my connection isn't dropping. With the genie, I wanted to smash the stupid adapter, getting slow speeds and constantly dropping out. This thing is decent/good if you just don't use the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad (like seriously they should be embarrassed by this) program they say you need to use it. Internet where I live is fairly poor, and using the device driver WITHOUT the genie still had a significant benefit. When the program made my problem even more of an issue, I thought the adapter was a lost cause. So seriously, look up that YouTube video (or just install the driver if you already know how) and hopefully you'll also find that this is a solid device that does a good job, permitting you know how to set it up properly. @Netgear your program literally makes life harder. Will you read this, no. I just wanted to say this because it seriously sucks and I hate you for it.

The wifi connection speed is fast for a usb adapter. The installation process is a bit of a pain, you either have to use the stand or hope you got a usb on top of pc and you have to download a software to make it work, but if your willing to do that you get a very fast wifi usb adapter for a great cost. Reccomend getting this

First of all, let me emphasize how massive this USB WiFi adapter is. I've never seen one this big - EVER (and I work in the IT industry!) This thing is like the size of Captain Kirk's communicator! I don't know of many PCs or laptops that this WiFi adapter could plug directly into without getting in the way of other USB devices or plugs. So, its a good thing it comes with a stand. You plug the stand into the computer, and plug the WiFi adapter into the stand. This is ideal for positioning the antenna for the best signal. However, calling this 'portable' is a stretch for two reasons. First, the size makes it less portable that nearly any other USB WiFi adapter on the market. Second, there is no built-in Windows driver. When you plug this into your Windows 10 or 11-based computer, it has no idea what it is or what to do with it. While the unit comes with a CD with drivers, I haven't had a computer with a CD/DVD drive in years! What am I supposed to do with the CD? How am I supposed to go online with a computer that has no internet access without the WiFi adapter to download the driver from Netgear required to use the WiFi adapter? Wouldn't it make more sense to include any required USB driver on a USB flash drive instead of a CD? Especially at this price point. I need a USB WiFi adapter I can plug into clients computers and every USB WiFi adapter I have used in the past (from ASUS and TP-Link) is automatically recognized by Windows 10 & 11 and loads the driver required automatically. I wanted to upgrade to a portable USB WiFi adapter that had the potential for faster connection speeds, but had no idea this was a step backwards in convenience for my needs. The driver download also installs software that I do not want. I just want the driver, but Netgear forces you to run an .EXE file and the download is over 100MB in size. As a technician, if I need drivers, then offer me the option to download the INF and driver files so I can add them to the device manager. I do not want to install software on client's computers because I temporarily need to add a USB WiFi adapter to them while the computers are in my office for service. Once the computers are serviced, they go back to the clients offices/homes to be hooked up as they were. As you can see, this adapter is completely wrong for my needs. It does connect and perform at the advertised speeds, but at a massive inconvenience of driver requirement and physical size. I will have to use a small USB flash drive and copy the .EXE file from NetGear and keep it with the USB WiFi adapter since it is useless without the required add-on driver and NetGear has not given the driver to Microsoft to be installed automatically (even through Windows Update! Which, of course, requires a network connection and still Microsoft has no idea what the NetGear A7000 is or what to do with it!) While this is a step forward in connection speed, its a small step. My WiFi connection from my laptop to my NetGear NightHawk RAX120 router was 1Gbps, and now with this USB WiFi adapter I am getting 1.3Gbps. Of course, this makes no difference on my internet speed, but internal large file transfers to and from my NAS are slightly faster (about 20%). If you decide to purchase this, I hope this review will give you a realistic expectation so you won't be blind-sided like I was. While I can return this, I will likely keep it to have as a back-up adapter in case my current USB WiFi adapter fails or is in use on another computer.